


The Next Move

by tielan



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Love Is for Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 07:51:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6146791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Advice on the choices of intimacy, and inversions through the years between two women.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Next Move

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andveryginger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andveryginger/gifts).



Natasha only waited for the PA to signal that Maria was available before she walked in. No fanfare, no forewarning. Just the way she liked it.

“How long have you known?”

“Now that’s an open question if ever I heard one.” Maria didn’t look up from her laptop.

She dropped into the chair in front of the desk. “You know exactly what I mean.”

It was, she acknowledged, a ridiculous reaction. She’d always known that Barton had his secrets, just as she did. It wasn’t as though either of their pasts was an open book. But in the last couple of years, she’d thought...well, she wasn’t quite sure what she’d thought, but this last revelation had shaken her.

“I’m not psychic.” Maria frowned at whatever she’d just typed, corrected it, and clicked with her mouse. Her eyes met Natasha’s. “So, as a matter of fact, I _can’t_ know exactly what you mean.”

No mercy, no leeway. That was Maria to the core, and usually one of the reasons Natasha liked the other woman, against all reason and likelihood. However, today, the deliberate obtuseness irritated her, scraping against her sensibilities enough to leave her feeling sharp – and without the willingness to hide it.

“I’m talking about the house in Iowa,” she said. “His sister, the children. His _family_.”

The family he’d taken her to see without warning, fanfare, or any indication of what was happening until she was standing at the door watching a dark-haired woman hugging Clint while a toddler eyed her with thoughtful wariness, and a baby tried to climb her leg.

If she’d known where he was taking her, she’d have run and never looked back.

Maybe.

“Four years.”

“What?”

Maria sat back in her chair. “I’ve known about Laura for four years – pretty much when Barton came in, since I was assigned to Coulson at the time, and Coulson was the one who got it all set up. It was Barton’s condition for coming to S.H.I.E.L.D – protection for his sister and her kids. You know what happened to his brother, don’t you?”

“Yes.” He’d told her about Barney in Prague one night several months ago, the two of them sitting shoulder to shoulder up against the cupola of a cathedral, listening to the sonorous tones of the mass inside as they swapped a little flask of vodka and quiet intimacies. “But that was...different.”

“Different how? Because it was a dead brother, not a live family?” Maria’s mouth curved in an amusement that seemed faintly mocking. “Is it that he kept his sister a secret and didn’t tell you, or the fact that he’s decided to share this part of himself that has you on edge?”

Natasha wanted to look away from the sharp blue gaze, and because she wanted to, she didn’t.

Within six months of meeting Maria Hill, Natasha realised that there were things she didn’t need to tell the other woman – Maria had guessed them already. It was one of the reasons that Maria was on the fast track up through the Directorate – that uncanny instinct that she brought to the table, to the mission, to the people she worked with.

“I can’t—” She stopped herself and started again. “I’m not… _that_.”

“Where ‘that’ is defined as…?”

“Familial.”

Maria rolled her eyes. “Has he asked you to settle down and have his babies already, then? That’s fast moving, even for Barton.”

Natasha bit back the instinctive retort – that she couldn’t have children in any case. That was none of Maria’s business. But maybe she betrayed herself nevertheless, because the blue-green eyes went flat and blank, and the wide lips pressed together in sudden tension. Then she sighed, and the blankness melted away, leaving careful consideration in its place.

“If you want to be reassigned—”

“No.” She liked working with Clint. With or without anything else that was happening between them, it was…satisfying. And how long had it been since she’d had work that was satisfying, with a partner who mattered? “It’s not that.”

But she didn’t know what it was. Or how to deal with it. She had no experience in this area – just a lot of theory absorbed from media, a head full of warning lectures from her Red Room instructors, and a little knot of terror that was pulling everything together, tangling it up.

And maybe Hill understood – at least a little – because her gaze softened.

“You’re not a killing unit anymore, Agent Romanoff. You get a choice. You get to have fun – if you want it.”

“Even in this?”

“Especially in this.” Maria shrugged. “I sure as hell am not going to play the _yenta_ for you. If you want Barton, you’re going to have to negotiate with him on this. And deal with the other parts of his life that he’s compartmentalised away.”

“And if I don’t want to?”

“Then you don’t have to. Barton seems man enough to take a refusal gracefully.”

“I…” Natasha paused, thinking of the careful distance that he’d started putting between them towards the end of her stay, of the looks he’d given her on their way back from the farm, of his expression as he dropped her off at HQ, to make her own way home – a wry ruefulness. “I think he already has.”

“Then it looks like the next move is yours.”

Natasha sat back in the leather-lined chair, trying to sort through her feelings, through the cacophony of emotion and reason and future. “I guess it is.”

* * *

Two weeks after she climbed in Clint’s window on a mission in Alexandria, the elevator doors opened on Maria biting back a smile as Clint put on his most innocent expression.

“Agent Romanoff,” Maria greeted her. “Have fun in Melbourne.”

She waited until the doors close. “Do I want to know?”

Clint grinned at her, the quirked smirk that she was still getting used to having directed at her. “Nope.”

* * *

It didn’t take Natasha more than one look at Maria’s face to work out what had happened.

Well, one look at Maria’s face, and a day of Steve and Sam being obvious. Or maybe it was just that Natasha was familiar with them, knew them far better than they imagined. Then again, Steve was a terrible liar, and while Sam could lie convincingly when necessary, he generally preferred not to.

Two of a kind they were.

Not unlike Natasha and the woman turning from the window of her office where she’d been staring out over the training field, her shoulders stiff, her expression carefully blank as she regarded Natasha.

“Is it urgent?”

Natasha shrugged. “Depends how badly Steve wants to rehabilitate him.”

Maria stared at her, a flat and unflinching gaze, before her lips pressed together and she dropped into the chair behind the desk. “How badly do you think? And Wilson’s no better.”

“The problem with looking like you know how to handle everything.” Natasha noted, amused. “They really do expect you to handle everything.”

“Including a brainwashed assassin, who’s wanted for espionage, treason, and murder in more than fifty countries around the world?” The noise Maria made could have politely been described as a snort. “That’s a little more than usual.”

But beneath the irritation lurked more than just annoyance at being handed a nearly insurmoutable problem in the form of the Winter Soldier.

Natasha leaned back in her chair, studying Maria with a narrow gaze. “I don’t know. S.H.I.E.L.D worked out a home for an assassin’s sister, a training plan for a graduate of the Red Room, and a job for a defrosted supersoldier. You worked out how to keep world security going when S.H.I.E.L.D fell, manage a superhero team full of ‘interesting’ personalities, and run a facility dedicated to supporting that team. Of course you’re the person Steve is going to come to when he finds Barnes.”

Something flickered across Maria’s face, and Natasha tilted her head, intrigued by the flash of something that looked very much like fear. A moment later, realisation dawned.

“Is it that Steve brought you a problem to solve, or is it that he brought you Bucky?”

“They’re the same thing.”

“Are they?” Natasha stared Maria down. “You once asked whether it was Clint hiding secrets that disturbed me, or the fact that he’d trusted me with them.”

This time, Maria dropped her gaze. “I’m not…” Her lips pressed together. “There’s only so much I can do.”

“I doubt he’s asking you to get Barnes free and clear. Unless he has?” But Steve wouldn’t have asked the impossible of Maria. Just as much as she could give him.

Which, Natasha suddenly realised, explained a lot of things she’d seen in the last year since the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D.

“He hasn’t asked you to settle down and have his babies yet, has he?”

The swift, startled look and the sudden tension in Maria’s stance was interesting, to say the least. As was her response, clipped and cool. “I don’t think Captain America is quite the ‘settling down’ type.”

“I don’t think Captain America is the one you’re in love with.”

That earned her a flat stare. “We’re friends and colleagues.”

“So were Clint and I.” Natasha watches that one hit home. “You’re not in S.H.I.E.L.D anymore, you know.”

Maria stared at her for a few seconds before she said, quite simply, “The problem isn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. Or Steve.”

“You think the problem is you.”

“I’m not...suitable. For Captain America _or_ Steve Rogers.”

“You could let him decide that instead of keeping him at arm’s length.” Natasha tilted her head. “Was it after DC or after Sokovia?”

“Sokovia. And yes, he took refusal gracefully, but...” She made a face. “This is stupid.”

“But still important.”

“Because it’s important to keep Captain America happy?”

“Because you should get a choice, too.” Natasha stared the other woman down. She’d always known they were more alike than either of them were willing to admit – at the top of their game, under a critical eye, working with men who might feel every reason to dismiss them as pretty sidepieces or mere eye candy. And yet, they’d kept going, through the best and worst of it, because they believed in bigger things.

This time, the pause was long. “I’m not sure I can.”

“Then you can’t.” Natasha shrugged and tried to make it casual. “But you don’t have to hold your position in front of you like a shield anymore, Maria. You can have fun – if you want it.”

“If all I wanted was fun, I’d have climbed into bed and gotten a good ride out of him.” She exhaled and sunk her jaw into her hand. “But point taken.”

“Then I guess the next move is yours.”

* * *

Two weeks later, Steve came to the cockpit where Natasha was flying them back from Berne.

“Maria said you had words with her.”

 _Ah_. And that explained the way Steve had relaxed a little in the last week, even though the situation with Barnes was still up in the air. “Sometimes we even have whole conversations.”

She couldn't quite hear the huff of his laugh over the Quinjet engines, but she certainly felt the hand on her shoulder. “Thank you.”

Natasha grinned, staring out at the bright clouds in the blue sky. “You’re welcome, Steve.”


End file.
